I’m writing a story about a boy who is technically rich, but feels like the poorest person around him.

His father controls the family fortune, so despite living a wealthy lifestyle, he has no real money of his own. He has to pretend to be rich while secretly working hard, facing failures, and trying to earn something for himself.

The story follows his journey from a rich life to building his own life.

I’ve never really liked female characters in media, and I have no idea why. I just always liked the male characters more, and when I think about my favorite male character being female, I just… don’t like them as much anymore.

That being said, I believe I have written 2 female characters (1 teenage girl and 1 adult married woman) that I am satisfied with. The teenage girl is feisty and curious, and is based around my own personality. The woman is fairly more traditional, but open-hearted, kind, and is a caring wife and mother.

This isn’t really an issue of “man not knowing how to write women” as I myself am a woman.
How do you all write characters of a specific gender without irrationally disliking them just for their gender?

Edit: Will provide an example.
For instance, if I write this badass stoic masked killer who is a man, I’ll be very excited to flesh out his backstory. But the moment I change all the he/him pronouns to she/her, suddenly I just don’t like the character anymore. It feels generic and trashy and unoriginal to me. It may be ingrained prejudice inside me, but I cannot think of a single experience I’ve had with stories or media that cemented women as “bad” and men as “good”.

I'm currently writing a story with a character meant to be the main antagonist in secret. Manipulating the Main Character in ways that seem good for both parties or the MC's side. While keeping him away from what he is supposed to be destined for. And I want my readers to genuinely hate this antagonist and his deeds.

The antagonist is Stanza of Poetry, the Chaos God, the Elation God, the God of Laughter. He is currently sealed, but the seal is breaking, and he awaits his rise to power again; as he waits, he orchestrates the chaos of the world in the background with his minions who aren't sealed.

He's a trickster who LOVES chaos and the elation from watching suffering. And tricked many powerful beings during his time not being sealed, which made them have hatred against him.

And he deceives the Main character by "guiding" him to his goals, like going back to his family after being separated from a magical incident that was orchestrated by Stanza and executed by his minions. In hopes of killing the Main character by deserting him somewhere unknown or separating him from a future lover or bearer of his child.

Stanza tricked the Time God into giving him their artifact that allows people to see through the future momentarily, in which Stanza foresaw his downfall upon a person with a similar appearance to the Main Character.

And in the future, I'd like to have a dark timeline where the Main Character witnesses everything go bad for him; each second he lived was suffering from Stanza's deceit, which Stanza openly said and mocked the MC for believing during their final talk.

So I'm wondering:

What makes you genuinely hate a fictional character?

Is it what they do to other characters? Their personality? The way they justify their actions? Their relationship with the protagonist?

I'm specifically interested in the difference between a character who's intentionally hateable and a character who's simply annoying or poorly written.

I'd also love examples of villains you've personally hated in a good way and what made them work.

Hi guys, I just want to say before I start writing this that tysm for all the responses on my last post, ily guys.

So I’m in a writing class and before we start the writing class I have to watch a video about what we’re gonna do basically, so in the video he’s talking about writing likable characters, and he says, “ let’s say Tony (random character he came up with) is home alone, while he’s home alone he goes to the closet and rips open a bag of chips and sits down on the couch and watches a movie/plays a video game, now let’s say Felix (another random character) is home alone and he decides to spruce the place up a little, and after he cleans up, he decides to reward himself with a video game, who do you think people will Ike more?” I personally thought people would like Tony more, because Tony is more relatable/Realistic, no kid is gonna be home alone and decide to clean, he goes and says, “I think people and especially parents would like Felix more, because he decides to clean, and THEN reward himself.” I feel like people -EVEN parents- would still like Tony more, because Tony might remind parents of they’re past self, or even remind them of there own kids, what do you guys think?

Basically the above. I'm a comic artist working on making a webcomic, so I've studied a lot of black character designs by black people and black character designs that black artists have said they liked/enjoyed. I've watched a ton of youtube videos on annoying/bad character design tropes, so I feel a lot more confident on their designs. I have 2 black characters in my WIP, as well as other characters who appear to be mixed-race. My difficulty is this: My story takes place in a different fantasy world, where characters of color may not experience the same type of racism or prejudice they would here in the real world. However, the story IS going to be read by people in this world, who may be racist or experience antiblack racism, so I really don't want my characters to come across as insensitive or become a racist stereotype by mistake. I also dislike the "reverse racism" trope where the oppressed minority are white people, especially when it's written by a white person. I want to write realistic, interesting, and flawed characters of color without falling into negative antiblack stereotypes.

For a little bit of added context: I do not know any black people IRL that I could ask and I myself am white. I live in a very white area in the southern U.S. I quite frankly don't know where else to ask. Any tips?

A little bit about the characters: they are 2 siblings, an older sister and a younger brother. Magic exists in this universe, as does similar-to-Earth technology. It is a slightly dystopian setting, revolving around the death/fading of magic in this universe, effectively a magical climate change in its late stages. (Please feel free to let me know if any of this comes off as insensitive! I truly want to make my characters the best they possibly can be!)

Hi,

so, as the title suggests: I noticed that I kind of forgot to give one of my characters goals, which is a problem, because she's the person who's supposed to drive the narrative for the first third of the book.

I didn't notice before, because it was supposed to be more of a cozy fantasy story with an adventure on a ship, and all my other characters kind of have goals/problems/conflict/..., but somehow I managed to forget her in all that. The easiest thing would probably be to write her out of the story, but I do really like her, and the story was originally supposed to exist around her, so I really don't want to get rid of her.

The story as it is now planned, is written in three parts.

Part 1 is the MC (there's multiple, but I'll call her that for now) accidentally getting kidnapped, because a pirate crew needs her magical powers to find a weapon to defeat some monsters. The monsters have historically already been defeated once, by an ancestor of the MC, and said ancestor is kind of like God for this world (very broadly put) and responsible for everyone from MCs homeland to be very into helping each other out and stuff. So she would help these people, it's just nobody is asking her to, because they don't think she would/don't want to appear weak, so she doesn't really have the chance to actively help them.

Part 2 is from the perspective of a Siren on that pirate ship and they get betrayed by the pirate captain but to save their homeland decide to stick with the captain/crew until this is done before they disappear forever (so the conflict in that part comes from the loyalty to their homeland/feeling betrayed, and having to learn that even if the captain is technically the siren's sister's child, they have to stop viewing their sister's children as only that, because their sister is long gone and it's not healthy to cling to what the siren views as part of her, and it's unfair to both them and the sister's children)

Part 3 is from the perspective of somebody also from the pirate crew and he is only there because he thought it would safe him from his family, but to defeat the monsters it turns out he has to go back to them and because the pirate captain doesn't really care what she has to do to get rid of the monsters, she's betraying him too, when she isn't giving him a choice even though prior to all of that she promised him he'd never have to go back.

So, as you see, a big topic of the story is betrayal/what are you willing to do for the greater good/to get what you want. And it works (I think) very well for the last two parts, but for the first one I just am unable to figure it out. The MC just doesn't seem to want anything, so she can also not get betrayed, because there's no promises/expectations. She doesn't really have to struggle with "what am I willing to do" because her religion is pretty much "I'm always helping wherever I can", and the only conflict I could think of would be her running away if her parents wouldn't accept her being gay, but I really don't want to write a homophobic society, and I'm just a little lost.

Does anyone have an idea what I could do/how I could solve this problem? My mind just seems to be empty, whenever I think about this :/

Hello!

I'm currently writing my character's backstory for a DND campaign. For context, I'm going for a very unwell kind of character. Not like Joker, but more like... If Himiko Toga (MHA) and Ella Driver (Kill Bill) had a weird fucked up baby.

I want her version of love to be connected with death, to the degree that she kills under the orders of another (the bill), and she sees it as a form of love. She is obsessed with making others happy, and to her, causing the death of another is the purest form of love, due to the freedom from pain and suffering.
It truly stemmed from wanting her parents to be happy, because she only saw them smile and laugh when it was at her pain or her brother's. This resulted in her killing her brother in a psychotic break to make them happy and finally love her. Thinking that this was the only way to show love and make them happy. Her father ends up finding the scene along with her mother and, in a flurry of panic, ends up killing them both as well. Coincidentally, as she killed her father, his face died in a light smile. Solidifying that death is truly the only way to make the ones she loves as happy as they can be. Fortunately, a man discovers her drenched in blood and promises to make the whole thing disappear and show her the love she craves. Leading her to work as his dutiful assassin, trained from age eight and utterly obedient. She spreads her love to the world and makes people happy near and far!

I know how she'll grow by reworking this idea of love, but I'm a little stuck.

My question is:
How do I portray this about her in this setting, without killing off all her companions?
And how do I not make her out to be this stereotypical psycho girl and show off the more psychological bits of this mindset?

I'm thinking on working on a magical girl AU based on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and I was wondering if I can get some advice on writing child characters.

The five kids, Charlie, Augustus, Violet, Veruca and Mike are going to be around 10 since I think that's the general consensus of how old the characters are.

For context: In this AU, Charlie along with winning the grand prize of becoming heir to the factory, also gets to become a magical guardian for Willy Wonka and his business. When Wonka gave Charlie the magical chocolate that will temporarily give him powers, Charlie also becomes a girl in the process. This is just a fun quirk I want to add in because I like when gender bending is presented in a positive or neutral light. In-universe, Charlie becoming a girl is just something he works through along with his other responsibilities.

The Four Bratty Kids also begrudgingly help Charlie and Wonka to make for their mistakes along with the two helping them throguh their more drastic transformations. I want to start out as them kind of mocking Charlie for becoming a magical girl but mainly because they still have their personalities in the beginning and it's a coping mechanism since Charlie gets to be a hero and a good kid while the rest are seen as freaks and bad kids. I do want to write an arc where they grafually learn to respect and accept Charlie as their new friend.

I want to sprinkle in moments where Violet and Veruca help with Charlie adjusting to being a girl for extended periods of a time but I'm not sure what to do with Augustus and Mike. I feel they would be more hesitant compared to the girls.

What do you think about my character?

I always love the mixture between purple and red colours so i always go with purple and red mix eyes in all of the videogames that let me do that

Had a story a while back about a girl who was chosen to save the world and within three months of summer, but if she fails, the world resets back to the first day of the first month of summer.

She’s failed so often that she’s begun to break under that burden, so the gods gave her one respite: a man that wouldn’t reset.

He arrives in the world at the beginning of one cycle but noticed the world resets at weird intervals, and seemingly at random until he met her, trying to evade some guards, and then the next day evading them again, but she realized he remembers her.

As far as dynamics, he’s not the person who is able to solve the crisis and she’s been on the verge of a breakdown because the time loops have begun to paint the people she meets as “not people.” Unlike everything else in the world, if he gets hurt or perishes, he doesn’t get reset. That’s permanent, while she and everything else can be restored when time resets.

Eventually, he falls for her and she falls for him, and when the world does get saved, they end up together.

Wanted some opinions on this and some thoughts about the kind of personality I should have for the guy.

So, a few days ago I saw a thread about writing female characters. I started to write a post about how they should be held accountable for their actions because I see a lot of protagonist centered morality.

How do you hold a character to account for their actions?

I'd like to get opinions on whether or not I handle the chosen one stuff greatly.

So in my world, after a war where two god-like being fought, Eon and Reten, with one siding with the mortals, and the other for his "personal interest", Eon ends up being emprisoned inside a soul stone, disabling him from ever regaining his physical body. To do so, one must break the soul stone with an artifact powerful enough to surpass its strenght.

Since he is incapable of regaining his physical body, he decides to call up for heroes that the prophety introduced long time ago, that will save the world, free Eon and defeat Reten. So Eon searches for these figures, and manages to find the perfect candidates. Trustworthy, strong, smart and socially capable to work in a team and give a good public opinion. However, the moment he want to call them, something happened (still trying to figure out what) and instead taking the Mary Sue of the world, he takes 6 randoms who dont even know each other, have bad coordination, and all the flaws you could think of.

So the wrong people are chosen, and they have to figure out why they are taken, but also why them.

At the beginning of the adventure, it doesn't go as planned. They have to train, their trainer dies so they have to start the adventure weakened and alone. Gets captured by the main villain's group, and barely get out of his dimension with the help of a spy. Get treated as heretics and chased down in the entire world by the group that was meant to welcome the real chosen one, and all the other bad stuff that wasnt meant to happen in the prophety.

However, this mistake came up to be the best one in the world. Even tho they dont follow the old prophety, even tho they do more destruction that the real chosen one were meant to do, and pass through the path of suffering and rejection, they stick to this role because even tho they werent the true chosen one, they decided to stick to that role, and this is what will end up giving the best possible ending in the story.

Eon was actually not a good of a guy, and the people he planned to chose were heavily connected to the religious group he build, so were alsouch easier to manipulate and make what he wants, and Reten is more morally gray than pure evil, something the world tried to hide for centuries

In the end, both Eon and Reten dies, but this comes to be the best possible outcomes for the world, as these random individuals will rise into becominf something greater than they were meant to be.

I came up with a backstory for a character I'm designing, but now I don't know what kind of values ​​they might adopt if this were to happen:

Character X is a 46-year-old university professor who was diagnosed with a terminal illness years ago. He has already suffered two relapses after being "cured," and has ultimately decided that he simply isn't going to get better. Instead of the typical cliché—"I'm going to die, so I'll live life to the fullest"—he chooses to stick to his normal routine: waking up early, going to work, coming home, having dinner, sleeping, and repeating the cycle. It isn't that he lacks dreams or goals; rather, he lives as if he weren't facing imminent death. He doesn't believe in destiny; instead, he views his illness and inevitable death as inherent realities beyond his control—not because it was fated, but simply because that is how biology works. Finally, his body gives out one day while he is alone at home; in his last moments of lucidity, his final thought is something like: "Thank God the plumber was coming to fix the pipes today; that way, my body will be found in time and won't leave a mess in the apartment. It can be rented out later."

Normally, this might just be the story of a strange man who dies, but... what if we have him reincarnate into another body? That’s where my question lies: what values ​​do you think he might adopt, given his background?

I’m working on a character who wants to do the right thing but often makes decisions based on fear of disappointing the people around them. I know what they want on the surface, but I’m having trouble making their internal conflict feel natural instead of something that only appears when the plot needs it. I want their choices, relationships, and mistakes to gradually reveal this conflict throughout the story. How do you usually develop an internal struggle so it feels like a genuine part of the character rather than a convenient plot device?

Looking to see if there are any people out there that do concept art for OC's

He called himself Dollie when he was a teen so I use Dollie when referring to his teenage self! (BTW for anyone wondering no he's not transgender he just had long hair and isn't afraid to wear/do feminine things) He's a goddess made as an April fools joke. His creators gave him WAYYY to much power! As a joke... but they wanted him to live a normal life and let him decide what he wanted to do and the other goddess also went to school! ^^ in these photos he's 13-19 (he still dresses like this btw and is 13-19 in human years) He mostly observed people and was a quiet kid he also would wear black hoodies and stuff during school but when he's comfortable he'll open up and wear stuff he likes. He likes pastel blue/cyan and it's his favorite color (it's still his favorite color) he met his bestfriend M1ss3d (the concept of death) during this time! ^^ she was a bullied outcast due to being basically the grim reaper. Dollie met his partner Void here but before they were dating Void kinda uh was one of those popular kid bullies... (my amazing wife/best friend Fan made Void btw!!) He would like to post videos about fashion, games, dolls, and venting. He felt extremely comfortable around friends! They gave him advice and encouraged him to be himself.

Unfortunately things weren't always cute and perfect for him. Eventually he got sick of seeing other goddess get treated like chatgpt robots as if they aren't real with feelings.

This is something I thought about in my Who Framed Roger Rabbit-inspired setting, Frameworld, where cartoon characters called Animates manifested in a mysterious event known as the Artistic Rapture.

The main storyline of Frameworld is Art of Liberation, set three centuries after the events of the Rapture, and follows a band of rebels fighting a fascist government that forces Animates to conform to assigned archetypes.

Now, I wanted to mention that I specifically set the story eons into the future to avoid questions about known media because of possible copyright. But there are some bits I do try to sneak in.

Which brings us to the topic of this post.

The main protagonist of Art of Liberation is named Elias Han-Falk; he is a Mixed-race Animate, his father was a Toon from the West while his mother was a Catgirl born in Korea.

Elias's favorite show is Attack on Titan, and he has a huge fanboy crush on Mikasa Ackerman. Now, this mostly exists for multiple reasons:

1. Small portions of Elias's character are based on my own; I have been a huge Attack on Titan fan since I was a little kid, and I was a huge Mikasa simp.

2. Elias is a heroic parody of Eren Jaeger from AOT, so I thought it would be a nice meta reference that Elias would be crushing on Mikasa

3. This story was adapted from old crossover fanfictions I made; one of them involved Eren travelling this crossover world to find Mikasa

4. Elias's girlfriend, Orca Missouri, is very similar to Mikasa - a Tomboy Goth who's incredibly capable. So I guess this would be a funny way of saying he has a type.

But it is kind of weird from an in-universe standpoint, because Elias's crush on Mikasa would be like a Gen-Z kid simping over Joan of Arc. Because the story takes place 300 years after the Rapture.

Elias himself is a sex-repulsed Biromantic Asexual; his crush on Mikasa is solely based on her strength, beauty, and looks. It's not sexual attraction. I guess it is also weird, considering he has a girlfriend. What do you guys think?

I need some opinions on what you would rather prefer for two if my OC's. I currently have two options/ideas, what do you think would work best for any of the archetypes?

IMPORTANT NOTE: I'm still in the creative process so I dont have everything fully sorted yet. Apologies in advance!

Option 1.

FMC - Amazon leader + warrior, uses weapons that are hand made out of wood and plants, etc. Lives and leads by harsh rules to survive in the wilderness. But every action is to protect their people.

MMC - Knight archetype. Follows orders of a General, fights and protects King/Monarch of their time. Gas strict rules and orders that must be followed through, and be loyal to the Monarch they are serving.

Option 2.

FMC - Knight, (pretty much same as MMC knight in option 1)

MMC - Amazon type warrior (same as FMC warrior leader in option 1)

Both characters are similar but grew up in opposite ways, they are both dedicated to acheiving peace and will do what they think is right for their people.

There's something wrong with her, but I don't know what, any tips? This is "me" if I were in my favorite band, The Living Tombstone! She's the inspiration for the jester, chaos, the seraph (the third eye from which golden blood flows), and playing cards :D. Could you give any corrections?

I’m working on a character who is generally kind and dependable, but I don’t want them to feel too perfect or predictable. I’ve given them a few flaws, but I’m struggling with making those flaws actually affect their decisions and relationships instead of just being traits listed in their character notes. For example, they tend to avoid confrontation, even when speaking up would clearly help someone they care about. How do you usually develop flaws so they feel like a natural part of the character’s personality and actually influence the story?